Three Minutes
by mewling
Summary: It's a love no one can compete with. Ramenfic [I can't beleive it's a genre of its own...], gen. Narutocentric, no romance [thank goodness].


Series: Naruto  
Rating: G. Very clean; in fact, I feel a little ashamed.  
Warnings: (scratches head) Well, I guess it's not for ramen fans… but what sick creature wouldn't like ramen?  
Summary: It's a love no one can compete with. Ramenfic, gen.  
Author: Mewling  
Title: Three Minutes

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**Three Minutes  
**by mewling

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It'd been five seconds since he poured the water in.

Leant over the bench, head resting sidelong on the upper cabinet, Naruto watched the seconds tick by agonizingly slowly. All the training with pervert-sennin made his appetite even worse. Gods, it was as bad as trying to listen to a lecture.

The worst part was that he couldn't leave; he had to stay watching it. If he left, he would get distracted, run off chasing squirrels or rabbits and come back sometime later to find soggy ramen… which, despite all his love, was really disgusting.

He wondered if he was one of the only people who went through this kind of pain. He didn't think too many people ate ramen for breakfast every morning; most his age had their mothers or fathers or grandparents to cook for them, or cooked for themselves. Although, since he hadn't actually ever been over to anyone's house, he could only guess.

Naruto stopped himself from wandering too far along that path of thought. The past was the past. Nothing could be done; he still had the future.

Still two minutes to go.

Naruto grimaced. It was agonising. Naruto would never understand how something as simple as this could sometimes frustrate him to tears like he couldn't beat some ninja; but when it came down to it, eating was a life or death matter too…

And although his _waribashi_ (1) were resting on top of the plastic cup to keep the paper lid closed, steam laden with exotic scents of chilli powder and monosodium glutamate were finding their way into his nasal cavity… man…this was so _painful_.

His brain was going into overdrive, sending electric pulses to the glands in his mouth, telling them to produce more salvia, in anticipation for breaking down starch molecules and lubricating the food. Hence…

…the drool.

Only one more minute left.

Once, he had made the mistake of letting the pervert cook for him. He had lukewarm curry with lukewarm fried rice. It tasted like it came out of a packet of frozen meals. The curry seemed to be water mixed with curry leaf powder (2) and some mysterious gelatinising ingredient, with occasional lumps of what must have been vegetable matter, and some rubbery pink things that were apparently prawns. The fried rice hade been dry and hade a stale powdery-ness, mixed with shrivelled peas and tasteless carrot.

Jiraiya had asked what he thought of it. Naruto, with uncharacteristic cleverness, had said, "I don't remember the last time I ate like that."

And he didn't. He would have repressed a memory like that.

Thirty seconds.

Naruto was forming and deforming tiny little rasengans in the palm of his hand out of shear impatience.

Tick. Form.

Tick. Dissipate.

He made a small nose at the back of his throat. Why did his ramen torture him so, when he loved it so much? Naruto shook his head from side to side. He sounded like a girl. More specifically, he sounded like Sakura.

Tick. Form.

Tick. Dissipate.

Although, he wouldn't kill for ramen. No, he concluded, he wasn't like Sakura at all.

Of course, it mattered how _much_ ramen. And how hungry he was. And the flavour.

Tick. Form.

Tick. Dissipate.

He was so close. Only six seconds. A small, pink tongue flicked out and moistened his lips, unconsciously and unnecessarily. After all, ramen was mostly water.

Five…

The hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention. His heart was beating faster, and he could feel the adrenaline in his gut.

Four…

Breathing through his abdomen (3), his stomach filled with air when he inhaled and moved it around as he exhaled, resulting in that rumbling noise he heard so often.

Three…

One hand was already on the warm lid of the cup, the other gently running a caring finger along the striated side.

Two…

An involuntary grin had formed on his face; he was jittery with excitement.

One…

Now he was giggling.

Zero!

"Yay! So happy! So happy! Love love love love love!" he kissed the sides of the plastic, dancing around before sliding to the floor and digging in with unsuppressed glee.

Ahhh, so warm and tasty, so satisfying…

Jiraiya, watching this, was suddenly reminded of Kakashi reading his _Icha Icha Paradise_ books. Leaving to 'train' at the woman's baths, he shook his head, thinking.

Some ninja had the strangest weaknesses.

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/END THREE MINUTES/

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A/N: I do! I do! I eat ramen every morning for breakfast. I won't tell you how long I've been doing that, 'cuz it's embarrassing…

I love pork ramen the best. I like miso and shoyu flavour too. I worship those slices of _naruto_, but I always put way too many in…

Oops, a little side tracked.

(1) Waribashi are those delightful little wooden chopsticks (or _hashi_) you get in take outs. I don't have a chopstick case, so I use them for my bento… which is pretty damn lazy of me. But they're fun to snap in half.

(2) Curry powder is made from the leaves of the curry tree. Curry as a dish doesn't necessarily use it; Thai curries (of which there are many) most often don't. There is a _huge_ difference between Japanese style 'kare' and curry in South East Asia. If you want to cook Thai, for one, I suggest buying a lot of coconut. The recipes are pretty complicated, so I usually just through some chicken in coconut cream with garlic, some curry powder (very little), coriander root, mebe some ginger, chopped red chilli, fish sauce and a heap of Chinese coriander (it smells beautiful, like and Asian store that sells veges), and it looks and smells Thai, so score!

(3) Not literally _through_ the abdomen. This is how I used to breathe, noticed I breathed this way, started breathing the _other_ way and am now back to breathing this way. It involves expanding the lung cavity by pushing the abdomen 'down', so to speak, with the diaphragm, as opposed to it pushing the rib cage forward. Hence, you wouldn't see my chest 'rising and falling', but my belly would. I make my stomach rumble like that sometimes. It's fun. Usually, you'll only be asked to do this (abdomen breathing) in some kind of martial arts situation (I think it was Tai Chi). I could be wrong, I'm no expert.

That was long, huh? And I didn't even write about the merits of homemade ramen like I wanted too… Yay for eating!

**Please review.**


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